


Never Expected

by amorae



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Sollux Captor - Freeform, Sollux/Dave - Freeform, Wow and I am the only person who thinks this couple might be cute, blind!Sollux, dave strider - Freeform, dave/sollux, deaf!Dave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-20
Updated: 2012-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-29 19:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorae/pseuds/amorae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave had never expected to become deaf, just like he never really expected to find a friend who understood what it was like to live with such a disability. Sollux had never expected to become blind, and he had never expected to make friends with a human. Life often works in ways that we don't expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Expected

**Author's Note:**

> DERP. I thought about this on a train ride home the other week and basically ran home to write it, but got distracted by adult stuff/exhaustion/all of that. So I've been working on this monstrosity for a few days, now.  
> It sort of just.....it's not even a headcanon for me. Sollux is my precious baby and he's one of my favorite characters, but I kind of don't really ship him with anyone? I just noticed that there seems to be quite a bit of Dave/Sollux fanart, but no fanfiction, not really, so...this is my attempt?  
> I also ADORE the concept of deaf!Dave. I'm actually deaf in my left ear, so I kind of know what it's like to have such a disability. Also, my little brother is blind, so...? I just sort of wrote this for fun, but I hope my depictions are sort of on-spot, if you know what I mean.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy, enjoy, sorry if things are out of character, let me know what you think, blahdiblahblah.

Dave had never expected to develop a disability. Truthfully, what four year old _does_? He woke Bro that morning, terrified by the sudden and deafening silence that surrounded him.

At first, Bro was furious. He forced his upper body into a sitting position, rubbing furiously at his eyes while glaring down at his little brother. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was only nine. _Nine_? The little guy knew better than to wake him up at nine in the morning.

Bro was ready to huff and puff and blow Dave’s little house down, when Dave put a hand on his brother’s forearm. With his free hand, he pointed to his ear, and said: “Bro, I can’t hear no more.”

The following few days passed by in a blur of hospital visits, doctors, and audio tests. It was depressing, really—Bro had to watch his little brother be subjected to test after test after test, rude doctors poking and prodding at his head as if he wasn’t even human. At one point, Bro actually shoved a particularly rough doctor out of Dave’s way and snarled, “If you so much as lay a damn finger on my brother again, I’ll sue your ass.” Not that Bro had the means to sue _anyone_ ’s ass, no less a prominent doctor in his field, but the threat was enough to make the man back off.

After the fourth night in the hospital, a mousy-faced doctor stepped into the room and coughed into her hand. She turned to Bro and spoke with mumbles and whispers. “It does appear that your son—” “Brother.” “—brother has gone deaf. It…it seems to be a birth defect? This isn’t entirely uncommon, but, uh, what is uncommon is that it wasn’t noticed before. Have you, uh, taken him to get his regular check ups…?” Her voice tilted off at the end, as if she were hoping against hope that the answer would be no.

Honestly, Bro had considered saying “fuck it” to the whole “good parenting” thing. He had considered trying to complete a social experiment where he never took his kid in to the doctor’s to get shots or check ups or what-have-you. But one look into the little kid’s eyes when he came down with the flu was enough for Bro to rush him to the nearest doctor. Bro would never admit it—not even under the most torturous questioning—but he had been hopping from foot to foot while the doctor examined Dave, utterly terrified that the young child had come down with a terminal illness. But then it turned out to only be the common flu virus, and Bro had a hard time regaining his composure after that. He even snuggled a little with Dave that night, although, thankfully, Dave was far too young to remember that lapse of nonchalance.

So, the short answer was: “Of course I’ve taken him to his regular check ups.” Bro raised an eyebrow at the doctor, who looked stricken. “Do you mean to tell me that through some type of negligence, a doctor somewhere down the line failed to recognize that my kid was developing an auditory disorder?”

She pushed her glasses up her nose. “That’s something you should take up with his primary physician, not with, uh, the hospital staff…,” she said as meekly as she could. Bro crossed his arms and put as much effort as he could into glaring vehemently at the woman.

The fact of the matter was, though, that the damage had been done. Whether it had been the doctor’s fault or Dave’s fault because he enjoyed shoving Crayola crayons into his ears, he was still deaf, and would probably be deaf for the rest of his life.

They discharged Dave later that evening. There was some talk about cochlear implants, but they were expensive, and Bro wanted to make sure Dave was old enough to make the decision on his own. Dave tugged on Bro’s hand, whimpering and breathing heavily, now unaware of the sounds that he was making. Bro sighed and picked his brother up, carrying him back to their small apartment in downtown Houston.

 

Dave had never expected to adjust to this new world of silence, but adjust, he did. Together, he and Bro learned sign language, and they took on a mutual oath of silence in favor of speaking with their hands. It brought them closer just as much as it tore a riff into their relationship—Dave’s sudden disability caused him to become withdrawn and almost depressed, which, in turn, upset Bro. Bro had never figured out how to appropriately convey emotions, and as a result, he came off as a hard-ass that was perpetually in a state of disappointed irony. This furthered Dave’s depression, which became so time consuming and all encompassing that it almost took on its own physical entity as a cloud around his head. As Dave grew older, he learned to channel this depression into a morbid sense of irony, which suited Bro just fine. They were from a “don’t touch and don’t feel” family, and no disability would change that.

Sign language became their primary mode of conversation, except when they were having a strife session. Bro decided to teach his brother how to strife in order to build up Dave’s other senses. After all, if an attacker _did_ strike, Dave would not be able to hear them. He would have to rely on his other four senses to protect himself from the attacker, and how could he do that if he had never trained his senses? The strife sessions taught Dave to constantly be alert and ready for an attack. Although Dave rarely beat his brother, Bro couldn’t help the sense of pride he’d feel every time Dave came damn close to it.

Bro had taught Dave how to use his turntables and found, much to his surprise, that Dave was pretty damn good at being a DJ—especially considering he was deaf. Dave was about nine when they discovered this unnatural talent. When Bro asked Dave how the fuck this was possible, Dave simply signed, “I can feel the music, and I know what feels right.” Bro nodded and decided this was as good an explanation as any, and then bought the kid his own set of turntables for his birthday that year.

One of the ways that Dave got back at his brother for the constant strife sessions (which Dave hadn’t figured out were a direct result of Bro trying to protect him, not to hurt him—Dave would only realize this when he was 18 years old and it would come as an epiphany while he was at his dead-end summer job before he went off to college) was to blare music throughout their small apartment. Dave, of course, couldn’t hear the music, but he could feel it. He would pull up an entire playlist of Miley Cyrus music, blaring it as loud as his speakers would let him. When Bro would come in and sign furiously at Dave to “turn the fucking music off,” Dave would shrug and sign some pitiful excuse, like, “But it’s the only way I can enjoy music!” or “Sorry, Bro, I didn’t realize how loud it was—you know, with me being deaf, and all.” Bro’s lips would quirk into the smallest of sneers and then he’d flashstep out of the room, leaving Dave to his crappy Taylor Swift.

Another unexpected result of Dave’s deafness was his proficiency at typing, and at conveying/reading emotion through the screen. Bro was always curious about who Dave was talking to into the late hours of the night, almost the early hours of the morning, but he never asked. He just assumed they were kids that Dave considered “friends,” and that was enough of an explanation for the somewhat wayward and emotionally detached parental figure.

What Bro didn’t know, of course, was that he was right: Dave was talking to friends who lived states away, who didn’t know about his problem. And Dave? He never imparted the knowledge. He let them continue to think that he could hear just fine, and even when they had webcam sessions, he managed to scrape by—even if only marginally. He taught himself to read lips, and he became damn good at it, too.

Dave was 11 when he met John. Having spent entirely too much time in chatrooms as a child (especially considering the fact that he was only seven at the time), Dave was very skilled at the art of being friends with people over the Internet. But there was something different about his relationship with John. The kid was so stupid and so innocent that Dave felt sorry for cheating him, for lying to him, and as a result, John was the first person to learn of Dave’s secret out of Dave’s own volition. John was honored to have this role in Dave’s life, and didn’t even question what Dave was telling him. He accepted it completely, wholeheartedly, and only loved Dave all the more for it.

Jade and Rose came quickly after Dave became best friends with John, and the four kids formed a tight-knit group by the time they were 12. They were scattered across the States, with jade living on a random island with her dog, which Dave thought was strange—but then again, he was the one who had a disability, so he kept his mouth shut. He constantly argued with Rose and had fun with it—her snooty mannerisms really got to Dave, and he never missed an opportunity to really dig criticism into her side or chastise her for being ridiculous with her psychoanalysis drivel. John and Jade just sat back and laughed, acting so much like twins in those situations.

When they were all 13, they began to play a game, called Sburb. It was exciting and all of that, and Dave enjoyed playing it. That was, until the game killed his Bro, destroyed the planet, and killed he and his friends multiple times. He got a pretty cool title, though—the Knight of Time, which he thought suited him—and got a sort of derpy set of pajamas that he thought were cool but no one else did. He got to meet Rose, finally, and knew he was about to meet John and Jade. He also met some new friends, friends he hadn’t expected to make but friends nonetheless.

 

Sollux had never expected to lose a battle with, well, _Eridan_. But looking back on it, he guessed that maybe he should have.

After a somewhat dramatic battle with the ever-obnoxious Eridan Empora, he lost his eyes and with them, his sight. Less depressingly, though, he also lost the voices that plagued him every day, and with that brought happiness. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Sollux felt _balanced_. In an odd way, Eridan’s act of, well, dickery gave Sollux one of the best gifts he could ever receive: peace of mind.

When Dave and his ecto-biological sister, Rose, managed to find their way to Alternia after the scratch, Sollux barely knew either of them. He had been a little too preoccupied with the voices in his head to seriously pester anyone during the times when his friends were trolling the kids. He did know their names, however, and was able to pick out who they were very quickly. Rose’s voice sounded just as he had imagined it, and Dave kept his words to a minimum, as anyone would have anticipated from him. His voice was curt and tailored, as if he were speaking with great emphasis and attention. Each word was practically a work of art as it came from his mouth, and he immediately noticed how rare words actually were to this young man. It soothed Sollux, somehow, and definitely piqued his interest.

The following few days went by in a dull blur. Karkat had his mental breakdown and Sollux tried to console him. John sent a very amusing letter (each kid and troll had taken turns reading it out loud for those trolls who were blind, or partially blind, in the group) that spoke of sloppy troll makeouts. Terezi screeched about the injustice of the fact that she and Dave had not yet engaged in said “sloppy makeouts,” and Sollux heard a breathy laugh escape Dave’s lips—but no response other than that. Sollux wondered idly whether Dave’s facial expression had changed, or if it remained like stone.

Sollux spent most of his time during those early days hanging out with Aradia, discussing plans, listening to Rose, paying attention to the things Dave happened to say that weren’t pointless or ironic in some way. As the days wore on, Sollux grew more and more amused by Dave’s sense of humor—everything appeared to be a big joke to him. Nothing set him off, and that mentality fascinated Sollux. After all, for much of his life, things had been pretty downright terrible; it had only been since the accident with Eridan that his life managed to not suck quite as much as it had before (which was, as Dave would say, “ironic” because they were all going to die by the hand of Bec Noir at some point in the game, no doubt). Sollux found it fascinating that someone could take such a cavalier approach to life, and he wondered what had happened in Strider’s life to make him view what would normally be seen as catastrophic events with a smirk in his voice.

Sollux was called to program a computer in order to help lay out plans a little more clearly. As Sollux sat down in front of the computer, writing HTML and CSS mechanically, he felt a presence move towards him.

“Hello?” he asked, not daring to rip his gaze from the screen. The light from the screen was murky—he could see the shape of the luminescent light, and blackness on all sides. His fingers were poised over the keyboard and, not for the first time, he was thankful that he had memorized the keys and locations of everything that had to do with computers long ago when he just a grub.

The presence sat down beside him. “Sup,” Dave said, his voice taking on that same, clipped tone. “Figured I’d come talk to you. Wondering how you’re writing code, considering you’re blind.”

Sollux felt a smirk crawling across his features, and he let the smirk shine. Without turning his face from the screen, he said, “I have it all memorized. Easy, when you’ve been doing it as long as I have.”

It took Dave a few moments to reply, which worried Sollux the slightest bit. Had he accidentally offended the boy? Suddenly, Sollux felt hands touching his face. They ghosted over his features and down to his cheeks, both hands holding, feather light, turning his face away from the computer screen. Darkness swam in front of Sollux’s vision, and he had a feeling that his face had been turned towards Dave.

“Could you repeat that?” Dave asked, his voice sounding almost meek.

Sollux tried to keep the stammering to a minimum as he felt Dave’s hands leave his face. For a moment, Sollux contemplating reaching up and grabbing his wrists to keep the boy’s presence close; but Sollux stomped down on these urges and swallowed, his mouth suddenly bone-dry. “I have it all…memorized.”

“Oh,” Dave said, and left it at that. They sat in silence for a few moments, Sollux trying to imagine what Dave must look like. He had watched Dave, occasionally, throughout his life. He had a vague idea of what Dave looked like on a screen, but he had no idea what he looked like in person. For the first time since going blind, Sollux felt a pang of regret: regret that he would never get to see Dave for himself. He would never get to see Dave smile, or frown, or change his hairstyle or hair color. He’d never be able to notice the symmetry of Dave’s features, never notice the way his glasses sat on almost crooked ears, or the way Dave’s lips thinned when he was anxious (even if he didn’t outright display anxiety). Sollux would never know these things, because he would never be able to see these things happen, and the thought filled him with a sadness he had not yet felt for his disability.

As Sollux was lost in his own thoughts, contemplating the strange little ways in which his blindness affected him, Dave began to speak in measured syllables. “I’m deaf.”

The words jarred Sollux out of his thoughts. “What?” he said, and then felt stupid. “But you can understand me when I talk!”

Dave laughed, and the sound was breathy and almost forced. “I can read lips, bro. It’s not that difficult.”

Suddenly, Sollux understood why Dave had grabbed his face and turned it towards his own. It was so Dave could see his lips moving and work out the words those lips were forming.

The more Sollux thought about it, the more he came to the conclusion that, really, Dave’s hearing disability made sense. It would explain his careful precision, his apparent lack of reactions, his “cool guy” demeanor. “Why didn’t you tell us all sooner?”

“It didn’t seem important,” Dave said, and that was all that needed to be said on the matter.

 

Sollux had never expected to make a friend that day; but make a friend, he did. Dave quickly became his best friend, and together they would discuss the limitations to their worlds respectively. But they also discussed the unseen worlds that were born through their disabilities. Dave talked about how he was a master at the turntables, feeling the music as opposed to hearing it. He was able to pick out notes expertly and create beats that were truly worthy of booty-rocking and binge-drinking. He also talked about how his eyesight had increased, and how his inability to hear had taught him to focus on body language more than the average person. He could almost always pick out what a person was saying or thinking based on what their body was saying, and Dave had trained himself to pick up on subtle changes in posture that could help him figure out what a person was trying to convey. Sollux, on the other hand, discussed his heightened sense of touch. He was able to sense people when they came near him, almost as if they had auras, and he was now able to read them. He could generally pick out how many people (and sometimes even name those people) were in a room even if they hadn’t said a word. Every brush of fabric, every tingle of a texture, was important to him. In some ways, he sometimes felt losing his eyesight was worth it, thanks to this heightened sense of what was around him. His hearing hadn’t necessarily improved, but he almost didn’t need it with this new gift.

They ignored the kids and trolls as they focused on trying to, well, save the world. Sometimes Dave would laugh about it: “We’re sitting here having a tea party while they’re out there trying to figure out how to not die.” It didn’t matter to either of them, not really. What was to happen, was to happen, and they knew this. Instead of panicking, they sat together and whispered well into the night, until both were bleary eyed with exhaustion and happiness.

 

Sollux had never expected to develop a matespritship with anyone (other than Aradia, maybe), and he had certainly _never_ thought he would develop red feelings for a human. But, like with so many other things in life, things didn’t go the way he had expected.

It happened smoothly. One night, they hardly knew each other; the next night, they were swapping stories about disability; the night after that, they were lying in the dark talking about everything that came to mind; and the following, they were discussing romance. Of course the timeline was much longer than four nights, but in Sollux’s mind, it had happened in less than a second.

They had been lying on a bed together (since Rose and Dave had insisted they appearify some beds, because recuperacoons were not exactly up to par with human standards of comfort), talking about whatever came to their mind. Sollux held a palm across Dave’s lips as the pair faced each other. Sollux pronounced each word slowly and deliberately, so that Dave could fully understand what was being said, and Dave spoke normally into Sollux’s fingers (the movement of Dave’s lips helped Sollux imagine what Dave’s face might look like in his mind’s eye).

Dave surprised Sollux by popping the question. “So, Hero of Doom, when are you gonna let me kiss you?” Sollux had thought about laughing, just to lighten the tension. He wanted to ask if that was a line to a new rap Dave was writing, or if Dave had come up with it on the spot—but he was suddenly preoccupied by Dave’s lips on his own, pressing light kisses against his mouth.

“I guess right now,” Sollux replied. He placed a hand on Dave’s arm to locate him in space, and then dove forward to steal his own kiss. Except this time, he wasn’t going to let Dave move away before they were done.

 

Dave had never expected to find someone who understood what it was like to live with disability. He had grown callous towards people for this very reason, hiding behind irony and a veil of “cool” to protect himself from his fears.

But Sollux understood. Sollux understood better than anybody. He had not been born into the disability, but given it, by a random act of fate. Maybe it was the game, maybe it was their own stupidity. Dave guessed he’d never know, and honestly, he didn’t want to know.


End file.
